Friday’s attacks in Paris were horrific and shocking, as is the emerging story about the terrorist bomb which destroyed the Russian plane over Egypt. 129 killed in Paris and 224 killed in the plane crash. Non-combatant civilians indiscriminately slaughtered. Horror. Our sympathy rightly goes out to those who are left behind.

But here’s the deal: the only power terrorism has is the power to invoke fear and anger. So we need to be very careful about how we respond to these atrocities. President Putin has, reportedly, vowed to “find and punish” those responsible. President Hollande has referred to Friday’s events as a “act of war”. This is fighting talk: retribution and war. The message is that we are frightened and angry, which is exactly what the terrorists want.

Continue reading →

I know assisted dying is somewhat past topical, however I continue feel that the recent public debate on the subject missed the key point. The main argument advanced against assisted dying was about protection of the vulnerable. Whilst I sympathise strongly with this argument, I think it is secondary. The primary argument against assisted dying, it seems to me, is that it represents a dangerously wrong revolution in our perspective on suicide. Continue reading →

A colleague recently mentioned to me that he knows a church which hosts a regular fix-it club where broken household items can be brought to be mended. I love this idea – it strikes me as a prophetic stand against the consumerist throw-away culture in which nothing lasts long before it is assigned to the scrap-heap. Indeed, in which this is a basic assumption in the design and manufacture of so many goods.

For me, fixing things is entertainment. Just last week, I spent a delightful day diagnosing the fault in an almost unused, but out-of-warranty, mini-fridge. The switch-mode power supply’s main FET had blown, taking four diodes and the fuse with it. The new components cost £1.26, which is a lot less than the £39.99 retail price for a new fridge. And only a few grams worth of dead electronic components were thrown out.

Continue reading →

Frankly, I don’t know the right answer to give to those wishing to experiment with three-parent babies. But in the course of the debate I notice a few things that are worth commenting on. In no particular order, they are…

Continue reading →

As I followed the proceedings of General Synod this week, I became aware that the acronym MACSAS appears to have become part of our language. MACSAS is “Ministers and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors”. Having found their website, I have been browsing the stories on it. These are not comfortable stories to read as they tell of serious crimes and deep betrayal of trust by clergy and the subsequent failures of the church to pursue justice in response. The stories are not comfortable, but we need to hear them and respond with humility and honesty. A common significant pain point in the stories of abuse “survivors” (a much better word than “victim”) is that they have all in one way or another been disbelieved. Continue reading →

@TomPettinger and I have been discussing free will and God’s sovereignty on twitter, resulting in an agreement that Tom (Pettinger – we’ll take his surname as read from now on) would write a blog post about sovereignty and I would write one about free will. Tom has beaten me to it with his offering, which is here, and should be read as a counterpart to this post. Reading it myself, I kept thinking “that’s not fair, he keeps using all those Biblical passages I don’t entirely know how to handle”, which is about the best comment I can make on why Tom’s post really must be read alongside this one.

Tom begins his post by defining some broad boundaries, i.e. the meaning of “free will”, approach to Biblical interpretation and scope of argument. As the second poster, I will add one further constraint: in this post I will attempt not to reply to Tom’s post, but rather just to make the case I promised to make. So, within these constraints, my task is to argue from the Bible for the existence of human free will. Or, put differently, to argue that God is, in some way, constrained by choices we human beings make.

Continue reading →

Here is the text of a letter I sent to my MP this morning:

I tweeted you yesterday concerning the fate of the victims of persecution in Iraq. I am now writing more formally. I am hoping that the UK might be able to help those who are being systematically slaughtered by ISIS in several ways:

1. Airdropping supplies. We are, thankfully, already doing this and should be encouraged to continue doing so.

2. Providing sactuary to refugees. As a clergyman, I am aware that the UK treats asylum seekers poorly. The refugees in Iraq need immediate and widespread help. Is there anything our government can do to assist those fleeing the massacre and to welcome them into the UK?

3. Providing military aid. I know this is a frought area and anything we do commits us to long-term involvement. I have not been overly keen on military intervention in the past, but this case seems more simple than most: ISIS has nothing to recommend it and its actions are simply (in the words of Archbishop Justin Welby) “evil”. Can we stand by and allow people to be systematically slaughtered?

Yours sincerely,
Rev Tom Brazier (curate at Holy Trinity, Washington)